This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up, what's up? It's Chris Guillebeau here. I hope you enjoyed yesterday's buzzworthy story, all about the six figure beekeeping business. That was a beekeeping business set in Minnesota, which is not known for being the most hospitable environment for bees. But as you may have heard yesterday, that couple found a way to make it work and it's working really well for them.
The journey continues today, and let's talk about this principle of how what you're doing now is very likely not gonna be the same thing you're doing five years from now. And that can be true in a lot of careers, even in terms of day jobs and things you go to college for. You're not necessarily gonna be doing the same thing five years from now, but it's especially true in the world of side hustles. Now, a lot of business advisors will tell you that you need to select projects that are sustainable for a long period of time. I think that that is really bad advice for regular people.
This shows side hustle school and everything I do in my work, it's focused on individuals. It's not focused on companies. So if you're out there trying to build Microsoft, then maybe that advice is good. But if you're out there just trying to do something for yourself, not everything has to be sustainable. Not everything has to last forever.
In my journey, I've made many changes, done lots of different kinds of projects, and that has been a strength, not a weakness. So keep that in mind. And today's story in particular is about a mompreneur who starts a new project that brings in $12,000 in just eight weeks. Now, this is a service business. And recently we've been talking a lot about products.
So at the end of the episode, I'll give you a little refresher on the pros and cons of each of those, products versus services. Because when you're trying to start something new, the decision of whether it's a product or a service is an important one. It will determine a lot of the things you do next. All right, so let me say a quick thank you to our sponsor. I'm really grateful to them.
They allow the show to be completely free to you. And then I'll tell you all about this crafty mompreneur. [Music]
Back in 2016, May Najafabadi was a hardworking mom looking to start a side hustle. She wasn't new to the entrepreneurial lifestyle. In the early days of e-commerce, May ran a business reselling phone accessories on eBay and Amazon.
But after eight years and a lot of other sellers entering the market, her business was no longer profitable. She and her husband were also flipping security cameras that this market quickly dried up too. Because of her experience with the ups and downs of business, May wanted to diversify. She was reluctant to be totally dependent on one source of income. By this time, her son was in the third grade and she wanted to start a new business that had a low startup cost and wouldn't take up much of her time.
While considering options, May remembered that her son enjoyed taking afterschool enrichment classes. These classes are offered for one hour immediately after school dismissal. They range from sports like basketball and tennis to less physical activities like chess or mad science. The courses are offered by private vendors who come to the school and the kids would stay after school to participate because they were fun. This was also ideal for parents that couldn't pick their children up right away.
They would pay a fee directly to the vendor and can rest assured knowing their kids were safely entertained while having an extra hour in their day. When May's son was in preschool and kindergarten, he really enjoyed making crafts. However, the elementary school stopped making crafts with kids after first grade. This was May's inspiration. She says starting a crafts afterschool enrichment class at her son's school seemed like the perfect new project.
May's first step was to receive permission to become a vendor. To do this, she had to present her class idea to the school board. Once she received that approval, her next step was to complete a criminal background check required by law for those working with children. She also had to purchase liability insurance. Now that may sound complicated, but it's actually pretty simple.
For the background checks and insurance, she paid about $300 and craft supplies for a full year were a mere $400. So startup costs are pretty low and after those needs were met, she was ready to get crafty. May kept her expectations low for enrollment in the first class. She thought she'd be happy if six students enrolled, but much to her surprise and pleasure, she had 18 kids sign up. She charged $120 per child for a one hour class held one day a week for a total of eight weeks.
She then made over $2,000 from that first class working a total of approximately eight hours. So if you do the math, that breaks down to about $250 per hour. After that, she decided to expand. She now has two classes, that craft class and a jewelry making class. She also began to offer her class to other elementary schools in the area and she now holds class at five to 10 schools per week.
In eight weeks time doing this, she made $12,000. Pretty good profit for working only one hour a day. You could say making money using this model is child's play. But to be clear, this kind of work isn't for everyone. It does take a certain personality type to work with kids.
And as May puts it, it's a perfect side hustle for a stay at home mom or anyone with availability in the afternoon. And team side hustle school would like to add, would also be good if you had a lot of patience to deal with large groups of young children. So far, May's worst part of the experience was teaching that very first class. She says it was chaos. She wasn't sure how to set it up or teach the kids and manage time simultaneously.
It was a challenge to maintain control while keeping the children engaged. She learned from that experience, however, and is now a master at kids craft instruction. She also says it's helpful to research project ideas on Pinterest and Google image search before starting classes. So if you do fit the bill, if you are interested in this kind of project, how could you get started? The first step would be to approach your local elementary schools or your school district.
If they allow private vendors to hold after school classes, the next step would be to find out what kind of background checks and insurance you need. Once you take care of those prerequisites, all that remains is deciding what kind of class you'd like to teach. So what's next for this crafty mompreneur? May wants to continue extending her classes to more schools, which makes sense, so she's doing really well with it. She also has a website where she offers a tutorial for sale on how to start your own after school enrichment class.
She's even considering the possibility of franchising. Okay, so this is a service-based side hustle as opposed to a product. May has to physically go into the classroom every day or whenever her classes are and teach that class to the kids. Now she's earning a really good hourly rate for it, but of course she has to be there. So these facts on their own present some pretty obvious pros and cons.
First of all, super low startup costs for a project like this. In her case, she had to do that background check and purchase some supplies, but the supplies she purchased were good for an entire year. And once you have that background check done, then it's done, it's a one-off cost. There's also no inventory aside from those supplies. So the approval from the school board could take a minute, but aside from that, this kind of project is the sort of thing that you can start really quickly.
You can start and get real world feedback. You know right away pretty much if it's gonna work or not, or at least if it has real potential. You're not stuck in a waiting period. You're not having to make decisions without a lot of information. So all that is great.
Now with a product on the other hand, you have more of an opportunity for passive income. Okay, so we recently featured the guy who has the $300,000 coffee grinder. It's not a coffee grinder for sale for $300,000. He's just sold $300,000 worth of this manual coffee grinder, a very small and simple basic item. And that's a product that sells every day on Amazon.
Okay, so the guy who sells it can sleep in one day. If he ever decides to take a day off, he can say, you know what, I'm gonna sleep in, not even gonna make my morning coffee. And yet whenever he rolls out of bed at noon and checks his website stats, he can see that he's made money in those hours that he was oversleeping. Okay, so that's pretty cool. Another consideration in this decision of do I have a product or do I have a service, which we won't go into a lot here today, but just to touch on it, is the role of personality.
So I often talk about skills, like how skills are so important. And I think it's actually more important to pay attention to your skills than your passions. Well, your personality also matters. So some people really enjoy teaching or doing consultations or coaching or mentoring or whatever it is. Other people would say, absolutely not.
I don't wanna do that. I wanna stay on my computer and find coffee grinders that I can resell to other people that I never actually meet. So there's a lot more to that, but that's the general principle. It's not just what business is best or what side hustle should you choose, it is what side hustle is best for you and also for you at this time. Because to go back full circle where we started, it's also okay to change.
And it's actually very common that you're gonna do something for a while and then something changes, either you change or the environment changes, the market changes, then you need to find something else. So Mae was able to do that. She had a previous business reselling phone chargers, which has nothing to do with this project. That was a product-based business. But she was able to apply her creative thinking skills and her willingness to take action to create this new, completely different side hustle service-based business where she brings in $12,000 in eight weeks.
So good work, Mae. Thank you for sharing your story with our community and listeners, I hope you enjoyed this one. Always remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/598. I also wanna give a shout out today to a friend of mine, Scott Harrison.
He has got a new book coming out in the fall called "Thirst." And this is his memoir of starting the global nonprofit organization known as Charity Water. I've been friends with Scott for a decade. Used to work with him in Liberia and Benin when he was first getting started before Charity Water. And he's a fabulous guy who has built a fantastic organization serving millions of people all over the world. He's actually donating 100% of his royalties from this book back into Charity Water projects.
So if you wanna check that out and pre-order the book "Thirst," that would be awesome. It's a great read. I have an advanced copy here on my desk, but I'm gonna purchase another copy as well because I wanna support the great work that he's doing. Okay, speaking of great work, go do some great work. I'll be back again tomorrow.
My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
